As expected, Aristoteles Sandoval of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won the election for governor of the state of Jalisco, albeit by a much smaller margin than most opinion polls had forecast.
As of press time, Sandoval led Enrique Alfaro of the Citizens Movement-Workers Party (MC-PT) coalition by 4.55 percent with just over 99 percent of the ballots counted. Sandoval had mustered 38.73 percent of the vote, Alfaro 34.18 percent, Fernando Guzman of the National Action Party (PAN) 19.87 and Maria de los Angeles Martinez of the National Alliance Party (PANAL) 1.37 percent.
Some polls prior to the election predicted Sandoval would win by as much as 15 percent.
The big story of the night in Jalisco was the demise of the PAN and the rise of Alfaro.
Guzman began his campaign for governor in March with high optimism and positive body language, confident of his party’s appeal in one of Mexico’s most Catholic states and convinced he could overcome the fatigue that was apparent after almost two decades of rule by a single party. He ended his journey Sunday evening with a stony-faced admission that he had been well beaten and was out for the count.
Guzman’s grimaces at that press conference revealed the hurt at having been deserted by thousands of faithful National Action Party (PAN) voters, mostly in the metro area of Guadalajara, who dumped the former state secretary general in favor of maverick independent Enrique Alfaro.
The same Tapatios in middle-class neighborhoods of Guadalajara who voted for PAN presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota turned their backs on Guzman (a candidate to the right of a right-wing party) on Sunday to throw their support behind Alfaro, a former mayor of Tlajomulco whose party-hopping in recent years has branded him something of a political chameleon.
The evidence of the betrayal: Zapopan, District 10 – a foregone conclusion for the PAN in the past two decades. This election’s vote split: Vazquez Mota, 75,028 votes; Guzman, 39,752 votes.
Alfaro was always destined to be the joker in the pack who would shake up the PRI/PAN hegemony in Jalisco. The former Tlajomulco mayor won kudos for taking on the Spanish-owned concessionaires of the Guadalajara Airport who refused to pay their municipal taxes. He introduced free uniforms and schools supplies for students and gave out dozens of scholarships.
But his impact was largely only in the Guadalajara metro area. Lacking funding after bailing out of the infighting Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Alfaro was unable to create enough momentum outside the state capital to trouble the well-oiled provincial PRI machine and its poster-boy Sandoval.
There’s no question that Alfaro was the main target of negative campaigning. Voters received hundreds of thousands of automated phone calls criticizing him for constantly jumping political ship (he started in the PRI before switching to the PRD and ending up in the Citizens Movement), taking a free trip to Cuba and for murky real estate dealings in Baja California. The PRI denied they were behind these calls but few citizens believed them.
In the end all the negativity may have just swung the election in the PRI’s favor.
Sandoval claimed victory within a few hours of the polls closing, talking to the Televisa network and promising new beginnings and reconciliation. But he was surely biting his nails in the following hours as Alfaro ate away at his lead, as results from the metro began to trickle in.
But the lead was enough for Sandoval to take center stage at the Minerva Glorieta around midnight along with a slew of other successful PRI candidates in other races.
“It’s going to be the mother of all parties,” one PRI worker said earlier in the evening at the party’s Guadalajara headquarters.
He was right. There were mariachi bands, fireworks a giant screen, and the festivities continued well into the early hours of Monday.
Although Alfaro has not yet conceded the contest, and is closely following the state Electoral Institute’s recounts, it is unlikely that he will launch a major challenge to the result.
“I’m 39, and I will be around for the next six years, make no mistake,” he said this week.
Unlike Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose day may have come after two successive presidential election second places, Alfaro intends to remain a major player on the political scene.
The same probably cannot be said for Guzman.